
Other governments including Indonesia, Chile and Zimbabwe are trying to maximize their return on deposits of lithium, cobalt and nickel by requiring miners to invest in refining and processing before they can export. “We’ve got to have partnerships with people that can get us the lithium in the form that we need," Jacobson said. Jacobson, at a Deutsche Bank conference in mid-June. "We already have that risk” of not being able to get enough, said GM's chief financial officer, Paul A. It is fueling political conflict over resources and complaints about the environmental cost of extracting them. Others are investing in lithium refining or ventures to recycle the silvery-white metal from used batteries.Ī shortfall in lithium supplies would be an obstacle for government and industry plans to ramp up sales to tens of millions of electric vehicles a year. went straight to the source and bought stakes in lithium miners, a rare step in an industry that relies on outside vendors for copper and other raw materials. and the parent company of China’s BYD Auto Ltd. BEIJING - Threatened by possible shortages of lithium for electric car batteries, automakers are racing to lock in supplies of the once-obscure “white gold” in a politically and environmentally fraught competition from China to Nevada to Chile.
